Stecker, Ch 3: Aesthetic Experience (=exp)

• What makes two very different experiences (watching a sunset and reading a poem about the sunset) aes exp?
• Stecker considers six views of aes exp:

• TWO KANTIAN CONCEPTIONS
• (1) Free beauty (Pleasure derived from free play of imagination and understanding, which presupposed no concept of what object ought to be, and leading to a kind of pleasure)
• Is subjective, universal, disinterested and involves senses, imagination and understanding in "free play"
• Problem: Doesn't account for many aes exp, including those that are highly conceptual, those that are not conceptual at all, and also the experience of art
• (2) Stecker's combination of
• Kantian dependent beauty (art, does presuppose a concept of what object ought to be)
• The agreeable (mere undiscriminating sensuous pleasure), and
• Free beauty too
• Problem: Covers many aes exp, but does not offer a coherent unified account of aesthetic
• SELFLESS ABSORPTION
• Bell, Goldman: Attention to object and excluding everything else from one's consciousness; total attention to what is immediately at hand
• Problems:
• Doesn't account for many aes exp; less intense experiences, more practical experiences
• Works better for art
• Self-less absorption can be involved in nonaes experiences (fishing)
• Requires DI (disinterestedness), but morel hunting is aes but not DI
• OBJECT-DIRECTED SENSUOUS PLEASURE
• Noticing the look/sound (or even taste and smell) of an object and finding it appealing or unappealing (shopping for toaster, eating a meal)
  • But this must be a discriminating response to senses, not just undiscriminating pleasurable response
• Problems
  • Doesn't account for many aes exp, e.g., representational paintings or narrative art
  • Works better for non-art objects (nature and everyday artifacts)
• THE TWO-LEVEL CONCEPTION
• Levinson: "To app something aes is to attend to its forms, qualities and meanings for their own sakes and to their interrelations, but also to attend to the way all such things emerge from a particular set of low level perceptual features"
• Problem:
• Not all aes experiences pays attention to how upper level aesthetic properties rely on base non-aes perceptual properties (for sometimes we just appreciate the base properties directly--as in a sunset)
• THE MINIMAL VIEW
• Stecker's view involving attending in a discriminating manner to forms, qualities, or meaningful features of things, and attending to these for their own sake (valuing intrinsically)
• CONTENT-ORIENTED CONCEPTION
• Aes exp is whatever pays attention to aesthetic properties (even if they are not being valued intrinsically)
  • Chapter 4 account of content-oriented view of aes exp
• Problem
  • Aes exp must involve valuing intrinsically, valuing for its own sake
    • Such a view can handle negative aes experience
• Even artworks that shock, unsettle, disturb or disgust us can be valued for their own sake

• Listening to music example
  • Listen and desire nothing beyond music itself
• Exp focused on the object (music), rather than starting from the music and moves on to thoughts and images it brings to mind
• Sense of hearing engaged, but also imagination and intellect: as hear sounds we connect them to what came before and what expect to come (imagination); look for coherence in the structure of sound not for delivering a message of some sort (DI)
• Get pleasure from dwelling this way on music
  
• Aes judgment is different from:
• Agreeable
• Subjective, don't claim universality, not DI, not go beyond pleasure of the senses
• Mere undiscriminating sensuous pleasure
• e.g., certain ways of tasting a meal?
• Cognitive judgment: Claim universal assent, but not based on subjective response to the object
• X is a tree
  
• STECKER'S PROBLEMS WITH THIS KANTIAN ACCOUNT
• Problems with Kant's free play of imagination and understanding and role of cognition (application of concepts to an experience)
  • Kant often claims that pure judgment of beauty (because it is subjective) excludes cognitive judgment
• We do not apply concepts in any rule governed way in aes experience (but use concepts only in the "free play" of imagination and understanding)
• Stecker thinks our aes exp is "shot through with cognition" and most of it would be impossible without many cognitive judgments
• Example: Judge something as a beautiful bird, thereby making the cognitive judgment that it is a bird
• No room for free play of understanding here
• Similar arrangement of lines and colors will lead to dif exp when judged to be products of different artistic styles
• Cognition is central to aes exp here
• Why doesn't he say this about the Loosestrife and pollution sunset cases?
• Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie
• Grid of geometrical figures in primary colors suggests movement, pulsing with energy
• Understanding categorizes it as Mondrian's mature style (but atypical)
• Imagination helps us see it as unusually lively and joyful
• Stecker thinks our response to this is more concept-guided than free play
• Such non-rep abstract art seems to me to be less concept guided and a better candidate for free play
• Further, Stecker thinks that many aes exp (like of a sunset) do not involve any significant use of free play of imagination and understanding (even if some minimal use of those faculties is involved)
• So these type of aes experiences are less cognitive, more directly sensual?
• Stecker objects to Kant's claim that DI requires that we don't care whether object exists or not
• Much aes exp does care about real existence of object
• Example: When enjoy sight of beautiful bird, important part is app of it as a real living thing: virtual reality bird or perfect plastic replica would not deliver the same experience (unless had false beliefs)


• SECOND KANTIAN ACCOUNT (dependent beauty and the agreeable)
• Kant's account of the dependent beauty of art and also of the agreeable
• 1) Free beauty--that which presupposes no concept of what the object ought to be;
• 2) Dependent beauty--that which does presuppose a concept of what the object ought to be and judges the perfection or imperfection of the object in accordance therewith.
• Many of above problems due to fact much aes exp involves cognition/conceptualization of exp in way forbidden by exp of free beauty
• Dependent beauty does "presuppose a concept"
• In enjoying the dependent beauty of a cathedral it is permissible (required?) to app it as a cathedral, perhaps even as one of a particular period or style
• Kant thinks that art aims at a kind of communication and thus to app art must bring to it a "concept of what it is intended to be."
• In addition to judge of taste (both free and dependent beauty), there are also judge of the agreeable
• The agreeable: that which the senses find pleasing in sensation
• With minimal if any conceptualization or thought or any use of mental powers beyond sensation, including not being discriminating in sensation?
• Examples
  • Pleasure in the green color of a meadow (Kant's example)
  • Stecker says pleasure in the app of a sunset is also the agreeable
  • Some would deny these exp are aes; not Stecker
• Stecker is broadening the traditional Kantian concept of the aesthetic on both ends
• More conceptualization allowed than Kant wants with free beauty
• Less conceptualization as allows in as aes responses that merely take in pleasure of the senses (with minimal thought).


• SELFLESS ABSORPTION
• Selfless absorption is attention to object and excluding everything else from one's consciousness; total attention to what is immediately at hand
• Schopenhauer: aes exp state of mind completely cut off from rest of life
• Clive Bell (famous Formalist): "To app a work of art we need bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its ideas or familiarity with its emotions"
• "Art transports us ...above the stream of life"
• Aes exp (or emotion) results from discovering and contemplating "significant form": formal features of artworks that are the only thing that can produce this special exp (aes emotion)
• Alan Goldman: When we are so fully and satisfyingly involved in app art we can be said to lose our ordinary, practically oriented selves in the work.
• Broad sense of engagement, that includes a work's representational features, historical context, and sensuous, formal and expressive properties
• Lose ourselves most thoroughly in a work's virtual world when we perceive it in all these elements and their interaction
• E.g.: Watching a play and being so involved in fate of characters, their words, what they symbolize that everything else is forgotten
• Or when listening to music and one becomes wholly focused on evolving structure of sound
• Three common features of selfless absorption
• One: Loss of self or will or practical concerns and separation from everyday world so one can be absorbed in elements provided by world of art
• Two: Art oriented conception
• But selfless absorption possible with nature
• Three: DI, in sense that we leave much behind
• Objections to selfless absorption view
  • Selfless absorption can occur in non-aesthetic endeavors, including meditation, furniture making, fishing, philosophical or geographical exploration
    • Goldman's reply: selfless absorption is aes when it has as its object a special virtual world distinct from real one (e.g., reading novel)
    • Stecker's rebuttal: Can be just as absorbed in music, architecture, or ceramics but these do not involve imaginary worlds like fictional representation of a novel does.
  • Some aes exp is of lesser intensity and totality: selfless absorption fails to allow that some aes exp of nature and art don't rise to level of mystical absorption and loss of practically oriented self-consciousness
• Also, some exp in art/nature not DI, and yet still aes
• Morel-hunting expedition (is aes, but not selfless absorption)
• Searching for and finding these mushrooms involves being immersed in a world of new growth, enjoying sights, sounds, smells and anticipated tastes
• Beauty one enjoys not sharply partitioned from fact one is foraging for one's dinner-indeed is enhanced by this by this interested pursuit.
• Practically oriented self is involved
• For object of exp is valued both for itself and for other things to which it is a means
• One could claim that only the former dimension was aes
• But Stecker claims the latter enhances the former?
• Harmony of pure delight and practical pursuits creates app of beauty in nature that can be valued as intensely as selfless absorption and it is very different from it.


• OBJECT-DIRECTED SENSUOUS PLEASURE
• Noticing the look/sound (or even taste and smell) of an object and finding it appealing or unappealing
• Material for aes exp delivered by senses
• In aes exp not just cognitive faculties but also senses stimulated and brought to life
• This seems far weaker statement of the role for senses in aes app than many would give; not just senses also involved, but sensation essential to the experience
• Allows it can be cognitively demanding (so not the merely agreeable)
• Discriminations in one's sensual field?
• Emphases on sensuous pleasure of the exp (and this blurs Kant's line between aes and agreeable)
• Examples
• Shopping for a toaster and we fasten on look of toaster rather than how many slots it has for toast, we are focusing on artifact's aesthetics
• Attending to the phenomenal appearance (impression of the moment) of a row of trees bordering a field an aes exp
• Eating: Meal centering on enjoyment of food, wine can be aes exp.
• Notice how far this seems from idea aes exp must be DI, in sense of self-less, non-practical
• Not art oriented: In contrast with art-oriented character of selfless absorption, this conception of aes fits easily with aes exp of nature, ordinary artifacts, human body, animals.
• *This view does distinguish between mere pleasant sensation and pleasure derived from discrimination of the sensuous & perceptible properties of object of exp.
• If pleasure of a meal simply the sensation of hunger being satisfied or sheer pleasure of undiscriminated tastes in one's mouth, not aes pleasure
• Person wolfing down his/her meal
• If exp is focused on object of exp-the food and its various qualities of texture and taste in relation to one another, then this is an aes exp. which is also a source of sensual pleasure
• "object-directed sensuous pleasure"
• Hard time explaining narrative art: This conception would seem to have an easy time explaining visual arts and music, harder time explaining what aes exp could be with narrative, especially literary arts.
• But also hard time explaining painting: Problems here even with explaining our aes exp of paintings
• Especially representational paintings-in contrast with abstract nonrep painting

• Distinction between phenomenal, true, and characteristic appearances (Don't need these?)
• Phenomenal appearance: appearance at the moment-finely discriminate properties among perceptual field and overcome habit of seeing according to broad categories-those are trees so must look green
• True appearance: if looking at a toaster, one isn't interested in how it looks at the store at this moment, but what its real properties are so can decide if it will fit into one's kitchen-is it pure white or cream colored, does it really have gentle curves one perceives it as having?
• Characteristic appearances: Trees look lonely or sad, toaster that looks purely functional, or car that looks fast
• For paintings most commonly not interested in phenomenal, but in true and characteristic appearances-what colors and shapes actually mark its surface
• For some abstract, non-representational paintings a focus on these appearances (phenomenal?) is often what gives one the aes exp of them
• More typically aes enjoyment of painting involves
• Noticing interaction of low-level perceptual features (colors, shapes)
• With its representational features (shape represents an arm)
• And with matters of large-scale formal design
• Often only after exp this interaction do the low-level perceptual features take on characteristic appearance:
• Only after see the complex shape as an arm that ends in a fist striking a blow that it takes on its characteristic dynamic quality
• Our interest in painting's rep world is hardly limited to way it arises from low-level perceptual features
• E.g., Picasso's Guernica

• So aes exp of painting can go well beyond enjoyable noticing of appearances.
• Stecker's overall assessment of object-directed sensual pleasure is that like self-less absorption it explains one important type of aes exp, but is not the only type or concept of aes exp.



• THE TWO-LEVEL CONCEPTION
• Levinson's proposal: "To app something aes is to attend to its forms, qualities and meanings for their own sakes and to their interrelations, but also to attend to the way all such things emerge from a particular set of low level perceptual features"
• This view can cover the more complex experience of the painting discussed above but also covers simpler cases of enjoyment of nature or ordinary artifacts or food
• Does not require loss of self or practical worldly concerns and complete absorption, yet allows for them to be part
• Stecker objects that it is not necessary always to attend to how the quality of one's exp arises from a lower level structural (perceptual) base
• Enjoyment of a sunset does not nec involve this for one is directly enjoying the colors and luminescence of the sunset and these don't seem to arise from anything lower.
• Stecker's objection is that we can aes app the low lever perceptual features directly and simply
• Levinson claims that the shades and brightness of the colors are the base and "their appropriateness to the heavenly body on which life depends" is the meaning part. I don't see how this arises from the base. Rather it is conceptual information brought in


• THE MINIMAL VIEW
• A more minimal aes exp than two-level view recognizes
• Exp derived from attending in a discriminating manner to forms, qualities, or meaningful features of things, attending to these for their own sake or sake of a payoff intrinsic to this very exp.
• But this makes fishing an aes exp?
• Anything that includes this minimal characterization is an aes exp
• Includes
• Levinson's more complex two level view
• Selfless absorption
• Object directed sensuous pleasure
• Worries that this might exclude the exp of shopping for a new toaster from the aesthetic (and Stecker wants to include it) as it does not seem to involve intrinsic valuing
• Even though one is noticing its color, design and coordination with one's kitchen decor and saying it has a pleasing design
• Because one isn't attending to the toaster's features for their own sake or for the sake of a payoff intrinsic to the exp (such as pleasure), minimal view would (implausibly) deny this is an aes exp
• But not clear to me that one isn't attending to these features of the toaster (thought of as being in one's kitchen) as valuable for their own sake
  
• Two questions:
• One: Is aes valuing intrinsic valuing? Must aes exp involve valuing something for its own sake (or for the sake of a payoff intrinsic to the experience, e.g., such as pleasure) (Intrinsic value=IV)
• Or could something be an aes exp w/o being so valued
• Two: Is paying attention to aes properties enough, even if they are not intrinsically valued? If IV not needed, could something be an aes exp if it attends to aes properties of object even if not done for its own sake
• Perhaps this is what above toaster example illustrates


• Def of Intrinsic valuing: Negative definition of being valued for its own sake (intrinsic value or valuing)
• If we value something for its own sake we continue to value it even when we believe it brings to us nothing further that we value
• Many things seem to valued for themselves: Pleasure, knowledge, freedom, happiness, intimacy, certain achievements, various experience and activities.
• Yes Jerome, no Charles
• Def of instrumental value: Valuing something for the sake of something else
• valuable either as a means or as a mere constituent
• The thing is valued as a means to this further thing
• Unpleasant tasting medicine, unless believe it is a means to health, would not value it (and cease taking it)
• Constituent value is a type of instrumental value: Another way to be valued for the sake of something else
• To be valued as a constituent of something of value rather than a means to it
• E.g., taste of certain ingredients that go to making up the overall taste of food,
• Artificial sweeteners that are unpleasantly bitter by themselves but make drinks sweet
• The sweetener is a valuable as a means to a sweet drink, but taste of the sweetener is a constituent of the taste that some people value
• Things can be valued both ways (for themselves and for what they bring about) (e.g., health)
  

• COULD SOMETHING BE AN AES EXP W/O ITS BEING VALUED (OR VALUABLE) FOR ITS OWN SAKE? (Stecker: No)
• Stecker believes that to aes exp an object need more than perceptual cognition need some reaction like pleasure, enjoyment, or other from of satisfaction (or dissatisfaction)
• Jerome and Charles both experience a painting of Picasso but only Jerome values if for own sake and Charles only values if for what it brings (better discriminating powers, enhance pattern recognition, etc.)
• They don't have same exp because only Jerome values exp for own sake and only he has an aes exp.
• Exp are different because reacting to these perceptual processing differently
• Stecker argues that Charles who reads a Shakespeare sonnet for class and values only that it prepares him for getting a good grade on the test (and gets no other satisfaction from encounter with poem) is neither having an aes exp nor encountering aes properties
• He notices the metaphorical reps, that poem contains series of interrelated images, that it is in sonnet from, and that the meaning of the final part reverses the message of the main body
• But until he recognized that the metaphors are witty or images poignant, he has not noticed any aes properties
• But if one notices wit, one is at least slightly amused, or noticing poignancy leads to slight feeling of sadness
• And if one has these exp one has exp valued for themselves
• e.g., can't exp a property as graceful unless one response favorably to it;
• Valuation built into very perception of some aes properties
• No such thing as neutral perceptual cognition of properties like being graceful, witty, poignant, vivid, gaudy or dull.
• Point: Once aes properties are recognized one also has appreciation of them for their own sake (as minimal view claims)
• Depends on idea aes properties are response dependent in a way that includes favorable reactions to an object
  • Response dependence properties
    • Existence depends not only on state of object to which they belong but also on the way humans respond to the object
      • E.g. color
• PURELY CONTENT-ORIENTED CONCEPTION: AES EXP AS ATTENTION TO AESTHETIC PROPERTIES
  • And these exp of these properties need not be valued for own sake
• Stecker rejects this view, because the recognition of some aes properties involves positive valuing

• How even artworks that shock, unsettle, disturb or disgust us can be valued for their own sake
• Being (positively) aes engaged with an object is being in a state of mind valued for itself
• While typically it is a pleasurable state of mind and this makes it obvious why it is valuable for itself
• Art that shocks, unsettles, disturbs or disgusts us is not art that gives us a pleasurable state of mind
• But if we think they offer positive aes exp, it is because we value this exp of engaging with them
• In contrast, after attending an exhibit of a bisected cow we say: "it was just like visiting the dentist; I hated being there, but I'm better off for it; I can better deal with things that disgust me"
• Positive instrumental value in the exp, but not aes positive; we disliked it for its own sake.
• An aes exp? Yes, a negative aes exp.

• Miscellaneous (ignore below)
• Being valued for its own sake is not same as being valued disinterestedly
• DI value probably implies IV
• But IV does not imply DI valuing (for Kant's version DI valuing includes not valuing something instrumentally as well and IV valuing is compatible with XV at same time)
  
• Arguments for why aes exp need not be IV
• Many are Noel Carroll's
• One: Aes exp that are like constituent items with no value in themselves but valuable as constituents of something larger
• Noticing the repetition of rectilinear forms in a cubist painting an aes exp of this type?
• Stecker thinks this is a perception-based cognition of a work of art and is not itself an aes exp
• No reason to think that every perceptual exp of artwork that may contribute to our valuing that work aes is itself an aes exp.
• Two: Given evolution, aes exp would seem likely to serve some purpose
• Stecker responds, okay, it can, but that's compatible with it also being valued for its own sake.
• Sexual intercourse serves an evolutionary purpose, but people value it for its own sake as an intense pleasurable activity
• Three: What about the aes experience of art that is not pleasurable